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Linking high GC content to the repair of double strand breaks in prokaryotic genomes

Genomic GC content varies widely among microbes for reasons unknown. While mutation bias partially explains this variation, prokaryotes near-universally have a higher GC content than predicted solely by this bias. Debate surrounds the relative importance of the remaining explanations of selection ve...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Weissman, JL, Fagan, William F., Johnson, Philip L. F.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6867656/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31703064
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1008493
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author Weissman, JL
Fagan, William F.
Johnson, Philip L. F.
author_facet Weissman, JL
Fagan, William F.
Johnson, Philip L. F.
author_sort Weissman, JL
collection PubMed
description Genomic GC content varies widely among microbes for reasons unknown. While mutation bias partially explains this variation, prokaryotes near-universally have a higher GC content than predicted solely by this bias. Debate surrounds the relative importance of the remaining explanations of selection versus biased gene conversion favoring GC alleles. Some environments (e.g. soils) are associated with a high genomic GC content of their inhabitants, which implies that either high GC content is a selective adaptation to particular habitats, or that certain habitats favor increased rates of gene conversion. Here, we report a novel association between the presence of the non-homologous end joining DNA double-strand break repair pathway and GC content; this observation suggests that DNA damage may be a fundamental driver of GC content, leading in part to the many environmental patterns observed to-date. We discuss potential mechanisms accounting for the observed association, and provide preliminary evidence that sites experiencing higher rates of double-strand breaks are under selection for increased GC content relative to the genomic background.
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spelling pubmed-68676562019-12-06 Linking high GC content to the repair of double strand breaks in prokaryotic genomes Weissman, JL Fagan, William F. Johnson, Philip L. F. PLoS Genet Research Article Genomic GC content varies widely among microbes for reasons unknown. While mutation bias partially explains this variation, prokaryotes near-universally have a higher GC content than predicted solely by this bias. Debate surrounds the relative importance of the remaining explanations of selection versus biased gene conversion favoring GC alleles. Some environments (e.g. soils) are associated with a high genomic GC content of their inhabitants, which implies that either high GC content is a selective adaptation to particular habitats, or that certain habitats favor increased rates of gene conversion. Here, we report a novel association between the presence of the non-homologous end joining DNA double-strand break repair pathway and GC content; this observation suggests that DNA damage may be a fundamental driver of GC content, leading in part to the many environmental patterns observed to-date. We discuss potential mechanisms accounting for the observed association, and provide preliminary evidence that sites experiencing higher rates of double-strand breaks are under selection for increased GC content relative to the genomic background. Public Library of Science 2019-11-08 /pmc/articles/PMC6867656/ /pubmed/31703064 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1008493 Text en © 2019 Weissman et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Weissman, JL
Fagan, William F.
Johnson, Philip L. F.
Linking high GC content to the repair of double strand breaks in prokaryotic genomes
title Linking high GC content to the repair of double strand breaks in prokaryotic genomes
title_full Linking high GC content to the repair of double strand breaks in prokaryotic genomes
title_fullStr Linking high GC content to the repair of double strand breaks in prokaryotic genomes
title_full_unstemmed Linking high GC content to the repair of double strand breaks in prokaryotic genomes
title_short Linking high GC content to the repair of double strand breaks in prokaryotic genomes
title_sort linking high gc content to the repair of double strand breaks in prokaryotic genomes
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6867656/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31703064
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1008493
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